Global Food Systems: Feeding the World

Abstract

The global food system could be defined as the activities involved in producing, processing and distributing food to feed the world; it links national and local food systems on a global scale through trade, technology, knowledge sharing, and labor and capital exchange. For over 10 000 years, it has evolved from the primitive utilization of vegetative plants and livestock domestication to the large scale, precision farming operations of industrialized agriculture currently in operation. Although important innovations have scaled this system to cover an exponentially increasing population and to reduce hunger and malnutrition, participation in, access to, and benefits of today’s global food system remain elusive to the 80% of the world earning <$10 per day. It is indeed shocking to consider that over one billion people are food-insecure and will go to bed hungry every night in 2011. This is equivalent to the population of the United States, the European Union, and Canada combined. Despite increasing yields, the global food system has failed to make the world food secure, a state characterized by food availability, food accessibility, food utilization, and food stability. The United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization and other groups that track the points along the food value chain, note that we produce enough food on a global level to feed everyone; the failure lies in access and distribution. All lives should have equal value and in some manner, we should all feel accountable to rectify this tragic inequity amongst humanity. Understanding the global food system, how to improve upon it, and how best to prepare the human resource capacity to provide services within it, will require a background review of some of the key drivers for change.